Nothing says nor’easter like the deserted streets of the barrier islands where traffic lights creak and swing at impossible angles, power lines shudder in the wind, and rain sweeps the streets and puddles up in roadside gutters.

In the desolate days of winter, a coming storm makes the islands seem more vacant, a lonely place where the howl of wind and roar of waves fall on few ears.

There are fewer people on the barrier islands this winter than any time in recent memory. Sandy saw to that. Many of the year-round homes in places like Ortley and Normandy and Chadwick remain marked by orange condemned stickers, and there isn’t a single motel opened in the 17-mile stretch from Point Pleasant to Island Beach State Park. The destruction left by Sandy is still hauntingly apparent, from the charred remains of Camp Osborn to the skeletal ruins of Joey Harrison’s Surf Club to the torn up boardwalk in Seaside to the broken, lopsided mansions of Mantoloking.

The hurricane left this island vulnerable. The winds and waves diminished the dune structures on the oceanfront and the tidal surge collapsed the bulkheads and retaining walls on the bayside.

In the days leading up to Friday's storm, crews raced to build up the dunes and that howl of wind and roar of wave was accompanied by the sound of dump trucks and bulldozers bolstering the oceanfront.

There is work to be done, storm or no storm. Inside the Coin Castle Arcade on the Seaside Heights boardwalk, workers were busy rebuilding the Sandy-damaged electrical and fire systems even as the waves churned by the nor’easter began to eat the beach anew just 50 yards away.

Sandy’s waves broke down the arcade’s cinder block walls in several places and owner Wayne Cimorelli didn’t think it would happen again.

“We’re doing $250,000 of electrical repair alone,” he said late Friday morning as the winds began to pick up and the raindrops got heavier. “Hopefully it will be just another nor’easter. We’ve been through them before, plenty.”

Sandy left 6 feet of seawater in the arcade basement and 5 feet of sand above. Still, Cimorelli hopes to be open by St. Patrick’s Day — like every year.

“But I’m haunted by the thought that it could happen again,” he said.

This is one of the residual effects of Sandy, made cleaner by the arrival of this nor’easter. The psychological fatigue is measurable in every voice, and the tired look in every eye.

“There is weariness here,” said Kevin Dey, the deputy emergency management coordinator in Lavellette as he ate breakfast in the Sand Dollar Pancake House, one of the few opened restaurants on Route 35. “We never thought Sandy would be as devastating as it was, and now with this storm, we’re hearing the same words like ‘catastrophic.’ And it puts people on edge.”

Marie Festa, who owns Sand Dollar with her husband, Tony, wasn’t worried about the storm itself but its cumulative effect.

The couple just reopened Wednesday after doing about $30,000 worth of flood repairs.

“Most people are in bad shape down here,” she said. “One of my customers came in yesterday, and he just looked so tired and blown out. Unless you’re living it, or seeing it its hard to understand.”